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A strange premonition causes friends to abandon their day at the speedway, just before a crushing pileup hurtles cars into the bleachers with fiery consequences. They have cheated Death. But Death is only getting started

IS IT A GOOD MOVIE?

When it comes to scary movies, I’ll almost always pick something else to watch instead of something that will scare the bejeebers out of me. It probably has something to do with the fact that I grew up in the middle of nowhere, where people from The Hills Have Eyes, could very well exist. Seriously. I do actually really like a well-done horror flick though; The Descent is up there with my favourite movies of all time.

I wouldn’t put the FINAL DESTINATION movies into the horror genre necessarily. I’ve never actually seen any of the other FD movies, so in all fairness I can’t speak for those ones, but the fourth movie in the series, simply just called THE FINAL DESTINATION, was pretty horror-less. I don’t even know if I can really put it in the thriller genre either… it was more like a comedy than anything. I have to be the biggest scaredy-cat there is when it comes to scary movies and if I can get through a movie without covering my eyes, well then, it probably wasn’t very scary.

However, I wouldn’t say that the film is a complete write-off. Well, it sort of is, but there’s a few things going for it. First off, the kills are ridiculously creative and I’m assuming that’s the way the other three movies are as well. I couldn’t stop thinking about the writers and how exactly they came up with all these ways to kill off the characters, something that I think would’ve made a really great special feature. Actually, I lied… there was pretty well only one thing going for it, the rest is pretty ridiculous. The dialogue was silly – like take this line for instance from some hillbilly in the film as he talks to a black usher at the racetrack right after calling him the “N” word “Your time is comin’, chocolate!” What’s up with that?! Ok, this might not be the greatest example in the world, but it’s the one that stood out to me… This guy goes from the mother of all curse words to chocolate? Whatever.

THE EXTRAS

• Two Alternate Endings – These were really lame. I don’t even really understand how they could be considered alternate endings. If they had chosen to go with either of them, the movie would’ve made even less sense than it did in the first place.
• Body Count: The Deaths of The Final Destination - Deconstructing Key Death Scenes - Basically this feature just went over how the special effects guys did all of the scenes. Kind of neat seeing the behind the scenes of it all, but a lot of times it’s just kind of underwhelming. I did, however learn that the explosions in the movie were real. They really looked like they were CGed explosions, but it turns out, they just looked bad on the final cut. Plus director, David Ellis’ just repeatedly said pretty well about every death scene that it was “really, really cool”.
• Deleted Scenes - All of the deleted scenes are pretty well just add-ons to the many deaths in the movie. Most of them don’t really take away from the film by not being there and a bunch of them were obviously taken out because they made no sense. Although, there was one that included in this feature that helped make a specific scene actually make sense, so go figure on that one. There’s also one scene I believe that didn’t revolve around someone dying and was all dialogue… It was awful and rightfully cut. It should’ve been cut from the cuts.
• The Final Destination: Pre-visualization and Storyboards

FINAL DIAGNOSIS

If you’re a fan of the FINAL DESTINATION series, I’ve heard that this film really lacks in comparison. For the sake of seeing all of the FD films, I’d say check it out, for no other reason then it is just part of the franchise. However, if you’re just looking for some cheap thrills or if you want to give your heart a jump or two, this movie is definitely not for you.